


Then All the Colours Bleed Into One

by theFowlestofthemall



Category: Artemis Fowl - Eoin Colfer
Genre: A/H, Cute(?), F/M, Hollemis, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I'm scarred) and because it's technically complete? seeing as how each chapter is separate?, You're Welcome, all the ship names, because I don't know how to write Artemis in a spaceship, hartemis, i understand this isn't the purpose of tags but who's going to stop me?, long enough for me to write about these two, marked complete because that question mark taunts me (too many experiences with incomplete fics, nothing new here folks, or anything for that matter, post-return from Mars, sappyish, the results of this experiment are that my brain is totally and completely fried, updated whenever school and homework get off my back, yet another "we're in love?" "we're in love" like we needed more of those
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-01
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-14 07:34:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29788578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theFowlestofthemall/pseuds/theFowlestofthemall
Summary: One-shots of the two usual idiots being, well... idiots. Except this time without the threat of mortal peril. (Mostly.)
Relationships: Artemis Fowl II & Holly Short, Artemis Fowl II/Holly Short
Comments: 3
Kudos: 17





	1. Proximity

**Author's Note:**

> After a week of celebrations following Artemis and Butler's return to Earth, Holly and Artemis are cooped up in his room, surrounded by the cold Irish air and too many unconfronted feelings.

"Holly?" he whispered. They were huddled close against the chill of the air, her head resting in the crook where his shoulder met the curve of his neck, his fingers barely brushing against the raised hairs on her forearms.They were sharing a flannel blanket that swallowed them whole where they sat, staring into the digital flames of the fireplace.

She wasn't in uniform, for once. As soon as she had a fixed date for Artemis' return, Holly had booked a week off to celebrate his coming home, with him and his family, on the surface. It had been a week of chaos and madness (and _family_ ), and Holly couldn't remember the last time she had been so happy. The buzz in her veins had felt better than running hot; better than that time she single handedly took on five B'wa Kell members; better than when she had thrown caution to the wind and kissed Artem-

 _Hmm_.

_Maybe not that last one._

Even so, she had loved every second of her stay at Villa Éco, and was most definitely not looking forward to the paperwork (a phrase that had never died despite the end of paper usage centuries prior) that was awaiting her when she got back.

Dismissing the unpleasant thought, Holly sighed to herself and pushed her body closer to her personal source of warmth. Paperwork would have her undivided attention tomorrow. For now, she preferred to wrap her arms around the waist of the human sitting beside her, even if — going by the rate their hearts were beating at currently — a little distance would have been wiser.

"Mmm?" she murmured, her head too full of cotton to form real words.

"You...," a deep breath, "You are very close, Holly."

She nestled closer.

"Mmm, I know. You're athletically pathetic," she said, prodding his bicep.

She could see his frown in her mind's eye, the way his lips pursed and shifted slightly to the left when he felt he was being attacked. "I'm afraid I don't understand the relevance."

"I thought we were stating the stupidly obvious."

"Er, no. I had attempted to alert you of your uncomfortable proximity so that you would distance yourself from my person. Since you have taken that opportunity to insult me, it appears that I must take matters into my own hands." And he shuffled across the carpet, opening the blanket up to the cold air in the process.

Holly jerked from the chill and practically jumped on Artemis to regain the lost warmth.

"Go be uncomfortable some other time," she said testily, "I'm cold."

And she wrapped her arms around his waist again, settling into the same position she had been in before.

Artemis squirmed in response.

" _Arty_. Stop it."

When he paid no mind to her words and continued doing his best impression of a slugworm, Holly growled and raised her head from under the blanket to glare at him. "Artemis, I am cold. And when I am cold, I get angry. If you do not stop wriggling around like a newborn sprite you will be reacquainted with my fist." In her quest to end her friend's fidgeting, she had failed to register the way his irises were almost completely swallowed up by black, the way his pulse was fluttering like a trapped butterfly under his skin, the way there was a slight tremor in his left hand.

They were close now, closer than they had been before. She could feel his nose pressing against hers, his erratic breath on her lips, his endlessly dark eyes boring into hers.

"Holly," he said again, his voice significantly more strained than it had been the first time, "I haven't seen you in years."

She watched as he dipped his head and let his hands find hers, cupping her right hand in one, tracing her fingers with the other. "For all those years," he continued, his voice so low she wasn't sure she would have heard him if she wasn't so fronddamned _close_ , "I had no need for control, for restraint."

He raised his hand so it was flat against hers, palm to palm, and she swallowed when the full force of his gaze shifted to hers.

"Artemis," she said, a quiet warning in her tone.

"You were far, far away, and there was no need for pretend."

He moved his hand to cup her face, and Holly felt her hand drop slowly, as if it was falling through jelly and not mere air. Her thoughts moved like they were wading through dwarf spit, her body freezing like she was wrapped in it when Artemis leaned forward and dragged his lips up her cheek, forging a path up her cheekbone, around the shell of her ear, until he stopped at her earlobe.

"I rather think I've forgotten how."

The chaste kiss he placed there thawed her frozen body, and Holly found herself crawling away from him as her stomach flipped over itself. Artemis' lips quirked up at her response, as if they were commenting on the switched roles of prey and pursuer.

Holly stopped her retreat at his expression, and raised her chin in defiance. She opened her mouth to speak, but the words caught in her throat when she saw him move towards her, and they shrivelled up and died when he leaned over her, forearms resting against the floor on either side of her head. _Frond, what had Mars done to him?_

Not to be outdone, extra red-planet-given powers or not, Holly raised her fingers and pressed the tips to the top of his jaw, curling her hand around the side of his face until he nuzzled into it.

"Arty, if you continue like this I won't have much resolve for restraint myself, and then we'd be completely lost."

She was whispering, even though there was no one else with them. It felt wrong to be any louder. It would break the spell they were both under.

But wasn't that what she wanted?

"That's hardly discouraging, Holly."

Holly let out a sound of frustration from somewhere deep in her chest. "Artemis, we ca—"

He held his hand against the back of hers to prevent her from removing it, as she had just attempted to, and shook his head at her.

"Holly, there isn't much to do on a steel ship packed with only the essentials for space travel except think."

He was looking right through her eyes and into her soul again, and she was too captured by his blue, blue stare to look away.

"So I ruminated. Unsurprisingly, a particularly violent elf came to mind more often than I should like to admit, and when it turned out that simply avoiding thoughts of her was a fruitless endeavour, I embraced them." His eyes remained on hers when he caught her other hand in his own, and brought it to his lips. "Believe me when I say that I have considered _everything_. All your objections, all your misgivings. I have a solution for each and every one of them." He paused. "Some more viable than others, but solutions nonetheless. I just need you to trust me." He dropped his gaze to her stomach, where her shirt had ridden up and revealed a thin band of skin. He pulled her shirt down before raising his eyes back to hers.

"Do you trust me?" he asked, his heart in his throat at the question, even after all these years of friendship. Holly paused to really consider her answer.

There was a lot more contained in the question than what appeared on the surface.

"More than I should like to admit," she said, and felt herself smile when he laughed, relieved, and moved even closer.


	2. Cloudy With a Chance of Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mostly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AU 2020 where instead of a pandemic we get hordes of melodramatic supervillains straight from the 60s?

For the fifth time this year, they were in mortal peril. 

She didn't understand it. They hadn't dealt with anything in about a decade, and then in one year alone every old Opal wannabe had crawled out of the cracks and tried to end the world as they knew it. 

In other words, it was a Tuesday in 2020. 

This one, as far as Holly was aware, was interested in living for all eternity. Or was it world domination? Honestly, they all kind of blurred together at this point. A small, bite-sized part of her wished Opal had returned. At least she had had some nice truffles.

"Holly?" her partner in all things save-the-world-from-impending-doom called. 

"If you are finished internally monologuing, or whatever it is that requires you to completely separate yourself from the danger at hand, would you kindly hand me your buzz baton? I have an idea."

They had been taken hostage, and were currently suspended over a volcano — originality was dead, she knew — but the villain this week had decided not to rid them of their weapons (and only an elbow to the side had stopped her former criminal from criticising this decision).

She gave a quick nod and easily slid her baton out of its loop on her belt, extending her hand as far as it would go. He grabbed on, she let go, and then they both watched as it whistled through the air for an uncomfortably short period of time, before it was swallowed up and promptly digested by the bubbling lava below them.

"Was that part of your plan?" she asked, lifting her head to eye him skeptically.

She watched as he swallowed and dragged his eyes to meet hers, "Admittedly, no. But now I can calculate how close we can get to the lava before the flesh is burned off our bones," anticipating her reaction, he tacked on, "to three decimal places."

"Handy," Holly remarked.

Needless to say, with them tied together above an active volcano growing hotter by the minute, with only ratty rope that was splitting from the strain of their combined weight, it was most definitely not _handy_.

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fic I've completed (and the first I've actually started, but that sounds less impressive) so feel free to be absolutely brutal in your criticisms!


End file.
